UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 14-4623
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
JEAN CLAUDE ROY, a/k/a Dredd the Don, a/k/a Dreddy,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
Maryland, at Greenbelt. Paul W. Grimm, District Judge. (8:13-
cr-00249-PWG-1)
Submitted: October 30, 2015 Decided: November 5, 2015
Before SHEDD, DUNCAN, and KEENAN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Gary E. Proctor, LAW OFFICES OF GARY E. PROCTOR, LLC, Baltimore,
Maryland, for Appellant. Rod J. Rosenstein, United States
Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, Sujit Raman, Kristi O’Malley,
Assistant United States Attorneys, Greenbelt, Maryland; Vanita
Gupta, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Mark L.
Gross, Teresa Kwong, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,
Washington, D.C., for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Jean Claude Roy was convicted by a jury of conspiracy to
commit sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion, three
counts of interstate transportation for prostitution, and
witness and evidence tampering, and was sentenced to a total of
240 months’ imprisonment. On appeal, Roy argues that 18 U.S.C.
§ 1594(c) (2012) is void for vagueness, that the evidence on the
conspiracy count was insufficient, that the district court erred
by excluding certain evidence pursuant to Fed. R. Evid. 412, and
that his sentence is procedurally and substantively
unreasonable. We affirm.
Because Roy did not move to dismiss the conspiracy count on
the grounds that § 1594(c) was impermissibly vague, we review
this claim for plain error. To establish plain error, Roy must
show that (1) an error occurred, (2) the error was plain, (3)
the error affected his substantial rights, and (4) “the error
seriously affects the fairness, integrity or public reputation
of judicial proceedings.” Henderson v. United States, 133 S.
Ct. 1121, 1126-27 (2013) (brackets and internal quotation marks
omitted). An error is plain if, “at the time of appellate
consideration, . . . the settled law of the Supreme Court or
this circuit establishes that an error has occurred.” United
States v. Ramirez-Castillo, 748 F.3d 205, 215 (4th Cir. 2014)
(internal quotation marks omitted). The “vagueness doctrine
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bars enforcement of a statute which either forbids or requires
the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common
intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as
to its application.” United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 266
(1997) (internal quotation marks omitted). A statute is not
unconstitutionally vague if the “commonsense meaning” of its
terms is clear. United States v. Powell, 423 U.S. 87, 93 (1975)
(“[S]training to inject doubt as to the meaning of words where
no doubt would be felt by the normal reader is not required by
the ‘void for vagueness’ doctrine.”).
Section 1594(c) applies to “[w]hoever conspires with
another to violate section 1591,” which in turn applies, in
relevant part, to
[w]hoever knowingly in or affecting interstate or
foreign commerce, . . . recruits, entices, harbors,
transports, provides, obtains, or maintains by any
means a person . . . knowing, or in reckless disregard
of the fact, that means of force, threats of force,
fraud, coercion . . . or any combination of such means
will be used to cause the person to engage in a
commercial sex act.
18 U.S.C. § 1591(a)(1). Roy argues that a conspirator cannot,
at the time of the agreement, know that the conspiracy will
successfully coerce a then-unknown victim to engage in a sex
act. Although we have not previously addressed this issue, the
Ninth Circuit has held that § 1591 “does not require knowledge
in the sense of certainty as to a future act,” but only requires
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“that the defendant know in the sense of being aware of an
established modus operandi that will in the future cause a
person to engage in prostitution.” United States v. Todd, 627
F.3d 329, 334 (9th Cir. 2010) (noting that it is impossible to
know future events with certainty). This interpretation
comports with the obvious, commonsense interpretation of what
people mean when they speak of “knowing” of a future event.
Moreover, the Supreme Court has held that a knowledge
requirement does not raise but “alleviates vagueness concerns.”
McFadden v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2298, 2307 (2015)
(rejecting argument that drug statute was vague because it
required defendant to know that possessed substance was
controlled substance analogue). Accordingly, we find that
settled law does not indicate that this statute is vague.
Roy also argues that § 1594 requires a defendant to know
his victim’s background because that background is relevant to
the definition of what acts are coercive. However, the statute
does not require the conspirators to possess this information
from the outset of the conspiracy, as long as they know that
their modus operandi involves force, threats of force, fraud, or
acts that they will devise to be sufficiently coercive to ensure
compliance. See Todd, 627 F.3d at 334. Likewise, Roy’s
argument that § 1594 is vague as applied to the “reckless
disregard” clause of § 1591 fails because a defendant can agree
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to traffic a victim when he has reason to believe that she will
be coerced into prostitution, but recklessly disregards this
danger. Because settled law does not render § 1594(c) void for
vagueness, we find that the district court did not err in
failing to sua sponte dismiss the conspiracy count on this
basis.
Roy next argues that the evidence on the conspiracy count
was insufficient because there was no evidence that anyone was
actually coerced into prostitution or that Roy and his
coconspirator expected anyone to be defrauded or coerced into
prostitution. “We review a district court’s denial of a motion
for judgment of acquittal de novo,” and will sustain the jury’s
verdict “if there is substantial evidence, taking the view most
favorable to the government, to support it.” United States v.
Reed, 780 F.3d 260, 269 (4th Cir. 2015) (internal quotation
marks omitted).
In this case, there was ample evidence that Roy’s
coconspirator used fraudulent promises to recruit prostitutes
and that Roy engaged in threatening behavior towards the
prostitutes. Indeed, one victim, K.M., testified that Roy
intimidated her into continuing to work for him when he
mistreated another prostitute who left and he stated that the
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next person who left would not be able to leave so easily. 1
Further, the jury could easily have found that Roy and his
coconspirator expected these tactics to succeed. Accordingly,
we conclude that the evidence, taken in the light most favorable
to the Government, was sufficient to support Roy’s conspiracy
conviction.
Roy also argues that the district court erred by excluding
evidence of a coconspirator’s later sexual conduct pursuant to
Fed. R. Evid. 412. Any error was harmless because the minimal
impeachment value that this evidence provided could not possibly
have affected the verdict. United States v. Johnson, 617 F.3d
286, 292 (4th Cir. 2010).
Finally, Roy argues that his sentence was procedurally and
substantively unreasonable. Roy first claims that the district
court failed to adequately explain his sentence. Most of his
arguments on this point concern the substance of the court’s
reasoning, not the adequacy of its explanation. Moreover, the
court discussed in great detail how Roy’s conduct removed him
1 Although the jury ultimately acquitted Roy of the
substantive § 1591 counts, this acquittal does not require us to
disregard these victims’ testimony in determining whether the
evidence was sufficient to support the conspiracy count. See
United States v. Louthian, 756 F.3d 295, 305 (4th Cir.) (“[I]t
is well-settled that a defendant cannot challenge his conviction
merely because it is inconsistent with a jury's verdict of
acquittal on another count.” (internal quotation marks
omitted)), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 421 (2014).
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from the heartland of the applicable Sentencing Guidelines and
how these facts informed its application of the § 3553(a)
factors. Accordingly, we find that the district court provided
“an ‘individualized assessment’ based on the particular facts of
the case before it [and] . . . a rationale tailored to the
particular case at hand and adequate to permit ‘meaningful
appellate review.’” United States v. Carter, 564 F.3d 325, 330
(4th Cir. 2009) (footnote and citation omitted) (quoting Gall v.
United States, 552 U.S. 38, 50 (2007)).
As to Roy’s assertions of error in the district court’s
Guidelines calculation, “rather than review the merits of each
of [Roy’s] challenges, we may proceed directly to an assumed
error harmlessness inquiry.” United States v. Gomez-Jimenez,
750 F.3d 370, 382 (4th Cir.) (internal quotation marks omitted),
cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 305 (2014). “A Guidelines error is
considered harmless if . . . (1) the district court would have
reached the same result even if it had decided the [G]uidelines
issue the other way, and (2) the sentence would be reasonable
even if the [G]uidelines issue had been decided in the
defendant’s favor.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
Because the district court stated that it would have
imposed an identical sentence as a variance if the Guidelines
range were different, the first prong of the harmlessness
inquiry is satisfied. Our review of substantive reasonableness
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examines “the totality of the circumstances to see whether the
sentencing court abused its discretion in concluding that the
sentence it chose satisfied the standards set forth in
§ 3553(a).” Id.
The district court correctly noted that Roy coerced and
emotionally manipulated his victims, taking advantage of their
emotional vulnerability, youth, and desperation. 2 The court
cited Roy’s use of a gun when recruiting one of his prostitutes,
his sexual assault of two of them, and his humiliation of anyone
who disobeyed him as proof that he was different from a typical
defendant subject to the same Guidelines. The court also found
that the need to protect the public from coercive sex
trafficking was great, and that Roy’s prior murder charge had
not made him respect the law, but that he instead used that
charge to threaten his victims.
We conclude that the totality of the circumstances supports
a finding that Roy’s conduct and the circumstances of the
offenses far exceed those of a typical defendant subject to the
2
To the extent Roy argues that the district court erred by
relying on conduct of which he was acquitted, this argument is
foreclosed by our precedent. United States v. Jinwright, 683
F.3d 471, 484 (4th Cir. 2012) (holding that acquittal does not
preclude consideration of underlying facts at sentencing). See
generally United States v. Rivers, 595 F.3d 558, 564 n.3 (4th
Cir. 2010) (“A panel of this court cannot overrule, explicitly
or implicitly, the precedent set by a prior panel of this
court.” (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted)).
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Guidelines he proposes. Accordingly, we find that the district
court did not abuse its discretion in its sentencing
determinations, that Roy’s sentence is substantively reasonable,
and that any error in the district court’s Guidelines
calculations is harmless.
We affirm the judgment of the district court. We deny
Roy’s motion for leave to file a pro se brief. See United
States v. Penniegraft, 641 F.3d 566, 569 n.1 (4th Cir. 2011).
We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal
contentions are adequately presented in the materials before
this court and argument would not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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